My daughter, Anna, is 20 months young. All through her early months I wrote little blog posts as a sort of catharsis. In those days she was still small enough and immobile enough that, balanced on a breastfeeding pillow on my lap, or nestle in the crook of my arm, I could wield a laptop or a phone well enough to jot down some thoughts. Which I did, hunched over in the dark, right from about Day Three. I've never been keen on sitting still and I don't think that's an admirable quality.
There was a lot of breastfeeding in those days, weeks, months, sitting and waiting and holding her while she slept, and thinking about all the other things I might be doing, used to be doing, could be doing. I found it incredibly frustrating at times. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would feel like when I wasn't bothered by it anymore. But by and by she changed, because eventually everything changes.
One of my most cherished discoveries in recent years is the singer/composer Tom Rosenthal. He has two particular songs that just feel so much like my early thoughts of being a mother. In the first one he laments 'just as I thought you could not sleep, you slept', in the second he asks 'a lifetime of trouble, but how could I not love you?'.
How perfect are those sentiments, for a parent wonder if their baby will ever sleep out of their arms, who comes crashing into their world and turns everything upside down? And how perfectly they encapsulate a memory you can hold onto when those experiences are long gone.
Those last two sections were a preamble to the main point I want to make, which is this - my daughter, in just twenty short months, has grown (emotionally, mentally and physically) so exponentially that it is almost inconceivable that she is the same tiny human. I'm not exaggerating, every time I take her out of the car (or, help her out now, she can take herself out, and don't you forget it), I get a flashback to this newborn baby she was. One whole day old, less than 24 hours, taking her car seat out, tentatively, and just looking at her, wondering what the hell we were doing. Puffy face, silly little baby-gnome hat, fast asleep.
I've felt it so acutely this week, it's as if she took a potion overnight on Sunday and by Monday she was saying two words together instead of one (Dada's jacket, Anna's money, Man! Doing! Oooopsie Daisies, yes please! Elmo's Song, lie down (followed by 'morniiiing!'). I swear to god, tonight she was standing at the bed and balancing on one leg, smiling at me maniacally, in absolute wonder of what she was capable of. Today alone she scrambled over the couch and climbed up and down chairs no less than fifty times.
She keeps working new things out, and I can't fathom that it's just going to keep going on indefinitely. She asked me to open her buttons today. I don't even say the word button, how did she learn it? Who taught her to say handbag? Why does she like Humpty Dumpty so much? Why does she say please all the time, do I say please that much?
Every time she gets frustrated and throws the thing on the floor and hurls herself on the ground in absolute despair, my world falls apart for her. But she always picks herself up, finds something tasty to eat, has a drink of water, and runs off to the next thing. No resentment, it's just emotional toddler stuff, she's learning how it feels to feel uncomfortable, to feel ok with herself.
She is going to keep on growing and growing until one day she grows taller than me, tall enough to reach right into the sky and grab a star. She's going to keep on going until she can do long multiplication and play musical instruments and read a book and really cook, not just stand on the seat next to me, frustrated that she gets a blunt knife to cut mushrooms with.
Somewhere along this road, I think I can identify it as being around Month Ten, something shifted. A lot changed then. She napped on the bed alone. She stood at things, climbed up and down the stairs, spent a lot of time in her highchair watching the birds. In these small moments, that built to this deep rolling crescendo in my mind, the narrative stopped being mine, it stopped being about me as a mother and what I felt about it all, and it started being about her. This is her story now.
I don't understand it, and I can't understand it because it's not really rational, is it. I can read all the papers about biology and cognitive development and the circadian rhythm and at what age your baby isn't waking because they need to nurse but because they want to nurse and what it means.
None of it actually makes a difference because Anna, her tiny little self full of hopes and generosity and sincerity and boundless energy, knows what she needs to do to get where she wants to go. I'm just going along for the ride. I hope she goes somewhere as full of kindness and goodness as it can possibly be.
Thanks for reading, Amy
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